NO ONE LOOKS ANYWAY

278. NO ONE LOOKS ANYWAY (nyc/philadelphia, '91):

I was sure of myself enough at least to continue deciding to go forward and I found myself from the high plains of Newark to the low swamps of Jersey in nearly one subtle plane together and alone and traveling with a crowd and watching thin ferryboats maneuver the waters glassed with evening’s light and the sheen of yellow being thrown by wind and water and there were never-ending runs of children and people gathering in places to watch across both land and water and it all was like a dream again to me as distant and far-off in both body and mind as the sand was hardening on the paltry waterfronts as ancient tides rippled out and passed and it all seemed as of some methodical enviro-postulate that the people lived and walked and worked - erecting massive homes along the shore places to which they returned each time and leaving boats of their own invention they lived in new wood and crowded the shores and ruined all that was once there just so in order for them to live the land first was surrendered to a new and uncertain kind of battering ram evil which took over sand and sea and all before it as I realized that so much of what had been erased was due to the erasure by powers of state and everything in a swath had been determined to no longer be Spy House Looking Glass Harbor all the names and every bluff and hillock above the once-used harbor had been stretched and thinned and taken over by ‘Government’ and signs thereof attesting to use and ownership and stipulation and YES YES it’s really hard to bring oneself to be incensed about such matters but I was and for the millionth time found myself repeating within anger and hatred and sadness and want everything at once AS ALL BEFORE ME the pounded sands had been manipulated and moved and all I saw was Evil walking and robots of its own devise and I vouched ‘that step is not mine’ but where can I go for now it seemed EVERYTHING had been taken over and it all lived by the State and pleasant by that thousands of others at each moment did so too but no one cared either – weaving and forgetting what they experienced and talking layers of lies on high and happy for it and along the narrow street the harbor kids were standing in some honky-tonk collection of pride and bravado and the life they led was all the life they knew and poorer for it than they ever knew they stood there idle amidst ruin and for every child there I saw I knew three more were hiding as small harbor towns like this breed nothing amidst themselves except more of the strange and the cheap-nickel lives of the people within them and they live these out squandered and dead and IF SADNESS TAKES OVER NO ONE EVER SEES IT living in ignorance is bliss and blissful ignorance is all of this ‘we’ll remove more sands as we keep this going and remove all signs of the distant past too WE WILL as no one sees what we try to erase for the reality can be forgotten as we cover over what was and breeding claptrap and roller-coasters with high-lights and bar-room fights we’ll call it a place and make them forget and we can walk all over THEN whatever we want’ and I see for them what ‘history’ is a moving template for monument and sign a place to hang a reference for some few years and then remove later for something else and everything out of favor is gone as that ovoid lens changes shape and the shape of what it shows and it’s sad again it’s sad THE EGGMAN IS GONE and all of his house and land and the Spy House become a routine and every other harbor-front mansion household landed home facing water boat-slip landing GONE until all they leave is scraps and then they’re gone made jokes of or complained about like the Fishermens' Co-op not long for this world - but the red sun bleats as it falls straight down and creases the horizon with its light it passes and hands over this world to the thin blue sky of darkness highlighted by the rising moon which too then hangs like a lantern in otherwise distended skies where no one looks anyway and NO ONE really cares.

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“No one looks in this microphone” I said to myself and then pretending to speak to beachfront crowds I rambled errantly on “no one even tries to listen let alone investigate and whatever goes past us is that quickly ended and finished and gone but let me reiterate the nothingness I feel and I’ve spent too many years right now to let it all pass me by without saying a word about what’s dying and I don’t care a whistle that you can’t understand me or don’t like my form or can’t find the space between all the words to make the sense for you I just don’t care it’s all your own rambling problem not mine and you do so much else so admirably that you should take a moment and try this too” and realizing I was getting nowhere I found myself amused enough to continue and it was just me and Walt Whitman and the other guy from Camden pouting shouting spouting to the sky – about the time the trains came through and took the lower fields away and the day when John Bartram came over to show us the real course of the river right there – not the industrial puss-heap they’d made of it but the one the natives once knew : bucolic and powerful and startling and real : and it all led to another land entire – one where angels played and one where vice was not a gamble but as quickly as I managed to speak more came and the jumble of words was growing and my mind changed to other matters and I moved along and we all just kept on going - past three shanties two big garages a boathouse and a den.